


Chiaroscuro

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, POV First Person, Siblings, tortured metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:45:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death reflects on Dream and Destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chiaroscuro

  
Del told me what our brother told Dream on the night Dream — this isn't the right term, but it's the closest you can get to understanding it — killed Orpheus. You've got creation on the one hand and Destruction on the other, and they balance each other out. Dream is more that just creation; it's hope, it's change, it's something else, but you could say that a part of him was off balance, though truthfully I think it started long before Destruction left.

Have you ever been to the circus? Seen those tightrope walkers? You never quite realise, when they're up there, the true consequence of falling. You see a foot on a wire, one in front of the other, in confident step. You see someone in gaudy clothes, green silk and faces that have been chalked up in brightness, and no one could be stupid enough to walk on up there in that kind of get up without being confident that they aren't going to die. You don't think of the contrast of drying blood against that bright, soft silk or the loud crack of bones and skull as a counterpoint to the shocked gasp or even about the fall, dizzying and despairing as it happens.

People say that life's a balancing act. Not that I don't agree, but life itself is only one weight. There's always the flip side, whether we want it or not. You could say that's where I come in. Without life, there's no Death. Without death, Life has no meaning. Simple enough, when you look at it like that.

Dream never understood why, on a visceral level, people hate me. It's funny, isn't it? He who was so scared of change… But most people surround themselves with life, immerse themselves in it and fall into it so hard that it's difficult to let go. I get that. Dream never liked getting too attached to life because I guess he knew better than most that the end of stories have nothing to do with 'happily ever after' and all to do with 'once upon a time'. Once upon a time, there was someone who lived. Once upon a time, someone died, and things began.

Once upon a time, men died, and then they became heroes. They loved me, those heroes. The 'blaze of glory' type, not the 'happily ever after' kind. Doing great deeds in life, and dying at the peak of their careers rocketed them from the fate of burning out quietly and ignobly. The absolute of Death highlighting the blaze of life. Weight, counterweight, then you get a balance.

People fall into life with a vengeance, and then they die mourning it. Dream fell the other way. We're not human, we can't do things on only one level despite what the younger three think. It started out as sibling adulation, but somewhere else, stories became stories about love and death, and somewhere other than else, Dream fell away from life.

I wish I knew what happened to him after the end, but that's not my jurisdiction. We're not end results; we're processes, which is how we continue to survive, because 'process' implies 'ongoing' and thus 'change'. Sometimes I wish, though, that I could just look for him and find out what happens to the ghost of a discarded aspect of an idea, but I respected Destruction's privacy, and I'll respect Dream's.

In the end, he found out how to strike that balance, walk that tightrope. Sure, it involved falling, but sometimes a cage is true freedom and sometimes the flying's in the fall. I'm glad, because as much as he was Dream of the Endless and Prince of Stories and Shifter of Form, he was my little brother too.


End file.
